The Right to Read

Chapter 4LD or not LD?

Current practices have led some commentators to label the situation a diagnostic scandal.1  Scriven

What is a learning disability? What exactly is this phenomenon that is so hotly debated by scholars? At least in regard to this aspect there should be some agreement. That however, is not the case at all:

No group of special educators, it seems, is less certain about the nature of their field or, for that matter, about its very existence than are those who work in the area of learning disabilities. The problem is that no one can decide precisely what a learning disability is.2

Twenty-five years after the LD term was first proposed, Sleeter commented that professionals were still wrestling with the question of how to define it. If they agreed on the major components of a definition and debated only the finer points, one could scarcely raise an eyebrow. But that was not the case. Major disagreements exist about what it means, exactly to whom it refers, and even whether it can be defined meaningfully:

Does the term refer to all children who are underachieving, or only certain children? While Cruikshank (1983) steadfastly maintained that it refers only to children whose under achievement is the result of perceptual processing deficits (p. 25), Mann and colleagues (1983) suggested that we adopt learning disabilities as a generic term for all 'mildly' handicapped as the label to replace other stigmatizing ones (p. 14). Kirk and Kirk (1983) reaffirmed the claim that LD results from intrinsic, not extrinsic problems, and that those mildly retarded educationally, due to extrinsic environmental conditions require something other than LD services (p. 18); to which Sabatino (1983) replied, And that my friends, is absolute nonsense;...Indeed, how can one deny a culturally-linguistic component in a socially relevant condition? (p. 23). While Myklebust (1983) asserted that, Learning disabilities can be defined (p. 15), Ysseldyke and Algozzine (1983) retorted, To us, debate about who is LD and who is not has always been the world's closest rival for Sominex (p. 26).3

Kronick commented that the LD label has become a catchall for students who do not fit the system. It is so broad a label that everyone could be and is being assessed as having LD.4

This dispute is still continuing  with no apparent resolution5  and therefore nobody as yet knows what this disease is. In spite of this, millions of children have been and are still being diagnosed as having caught it.

Naturally, because of the confusion and contention regarding definition, the matter of diagnosis is also in utter turmoil. In the U.S.A., whenever a child is formally classified as learning disabled today, he becomes the financial responsibility of the state. These children, who are provided with educational programs under federal law, are in most states distinguished from other children with learning problems on two grounds. First, the basis of their scholastic problems is presumed to be due to some neurological dysfunction. The LD category excludes children who have learning problems as a result of visual, hearing or motor handicaps, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage. Needless to say, this exclusion is one of the most contentious issues in the LD field. Apart from the fact that the existence of a neurological dysfunction has never been proved, it is impossible to prove that the environment has played no role in the creation of a learning disability. Second, to be diagnosed as learning disabled, there must be a discrepancy between a child's potential and his achievement.

Most other Western countries have more or less accepted the American model.

Discrepancy between Potential and Achievement

It is often said that a learning disability is an invisible disability. Other disabilities or handicaps are usually easily visible, but the existence of a learning disability can only be deduced from the fact that there is a discrepancy between a child's expected school achievement and his real school achievement, or a discrepancy between potential and achievement.6 Miles states that a person is dyslexic provided that there is a discrepancy between his intellectual level (potential) and his performance at reading and spelling (achievement) and that this discrepancy is accompanied by some other supporting signs, like problems with left and right, poor sense of time, putting letters and figures the wrong way around, unusual difficulty in remembering mathematical tables, putting letters in the wrong order, et cetera.7

If discovering discrepancies between potential and achievement is an acceptable and valid method of diagnosing disabilities, then there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands of other disabilities that we poor human beings may suffer from. They have so far gone undiscovered, simply because we have not yet compared the relevant potentials and achievements. For example, if one calculated from a person's physique, age, weight and height that he should be able to run the 100 meters in 11 seconds and the stop watch shows that he can only do so in 14 seconds, then that person must have a running disability. Now, of course the idea of a running disability is ridiculous, but isn't a learning disability then equally ridiculous? Why can't we use the same method to diagnose other disabilities?

Another matter in dispute is how big the discrepancy must be before one can refer to a child as learning disabled. The following event illustrates the untenability of the whole idea: A few years ago New York adopted a 50 percent discrepancy formula as a criterion for identification. A 50 percent discrepancy means that a child achieves only half as well as one would expect from him when considering his potential. Following the adoption of the 50 percent discrepancy criterion, the number of pupils identified as learning disabled dropped from 28,000 to 12,167, thus miraculously curing almost 16,000 children of their disability. A further implication of this new regulation was that a child of normal intelligence had to spend two years at school before a one-year discrepancy (50 percent) could be calculated and the child could receive treatment.8

The Birth of IQ Tests

The most important criterion to determine a child's expected achievement is his IQ. The aim of an IQ test is to measure the intelligence of a child.

Intelligence testing began in earnest in France, when in 1904 psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French government to find a method to differentiate between children who were intellectually normal and those who were inferior. The purpose was to put the latter into special schools. There they would receive more individual attention and the disruption they caused in the education of intellectually normal children could be avoided.9

This led to the development of the Binet Scale, also known as the Simon-Binet Scale in recognition of Theophile Simon's assistance in its development. It constituted a revolutionary approach to the assessment of individual mental ability. However, Binet himself cautioned against misuse of the scale or misunderstanding of its implications. According to Binet, the scale was designed with a single purpose in mind; it was to serve as a guide for identifying children in the schools who required special education. It was not intended to be used as a general device for ranking all pupils according to mental worth. Binet also noted that the scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.10 Since, according to Binet, intelligence could not be described as a single score, the use of his Intelligence Quotient (IQ) as a definite statement on a child's intellectual capability would be a serious mistake. In addition, Binet feared that IQ measurement would be used to condemn a child to a permanent condition of stupidity, this negatively affecting his or her education and livelihood:

Some recent thinkers [have affirmed] that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.11

Binet's scale had a profound impact on educational development in the United States  and elsewhere. However, the American educators and psychologists who championed and utilized the scale and its revisions failed to heed Binet's caveats concerning its limitations. Soon intelligence testing assumed an importance and respectability out of proportion to its actual value.

H. H. Goddard, director of research at Vineland Training School in New Jersey, translated Binet's work into English and advocated a more general application of the Simon-Binet Scale.12 Unlike Binet, Goddard considered intelligence a solitary, fixed and inborn entity that could be measured.13

While Goddard extolled the value and uses of the single IQ score, Lewis M. Terman, who also believed that intelligence was hereditary and fixed, worked on revising the Simon-Binet Scale. His final product, published in 1916 as the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence (also known as the Stanford-Binet), became the standard intelligence test in the United States for the next several decades.14 Convincing American educators of the need for universal intelligence testing, and the efficiency it could contribute to school programming, within a few years,

the Simon-Binet Scale, originally designed for identification of children requiring special instructional attention, was transformed into an integral, far-reaching component of the American educational structure. Through Goddard's and Terman's efforts the notion that intelligence tests were accurate, scientific, and valuable tools for bringing efficiency to the schools resulted in assigning the IQ score an almost exalted position as a primary, definitive, and permanent representation of the quality of an individual. Hence, intelligence testing became entrenched in the schools over the next several decades.15

Few people realize that the tests being used today represent the end result of a historical process that has its origins in racial and cultural bigotry. Many of the founding fathers of the modern testing industry  including Goddard, Terman and Carl Brighan (the developer of the Scholastic Aptitude Test)  advocated eugenics.16 Eugenics is a movement concerned with the selective breeding of human beings. Selected human beings would be mated with each other in an attempt to obtain certain traits in their offspring, much the same way that animal breeders work with champion stock. The eventual goal of eugenics is to create a better human race. The Nazis took this idea to the extreme. All inferior humans, especially Jews, retarded children or adults, and any individual with genetic defects, were to be destroyed; and so many ill and retarded people, and many Jews, were killed during World War II.17

The founding fathers of the testing industry saw testing as one way of achieving the eugenicist aims. Goddard's belief in the innateness and unalterabilityof intelligence levels, for example, was so firm that he argued for the reconstruction of society along the lines dictated by IQ scores:

If mental level plays anything like the role it seems to, and if in each human being it is the fixed quantity that many believe it is, then it is no useless speculation that tries to see what would happen if society were organized so as to recognize and make use of the doctrine of mental levels It is quite possible to restate practically all of our social problems in terms of mental level Testing intelligence is no longer an experiment or of doubted value. It is fast becoming an exact science Greater efficiency, we are always working for. Can these new facts be used to increase our efficiency? No question! We only await the Human Engineer who will undertake the work.18

As a result of his views on intelligence and society, Goddard lobbied for restrictive immigration laws. Upon his discovery that all immigrants except those from Northern Europe were of surprisingly low intelligence; such tight immigration laws were enacted in the 1920s.19 According to Harvard professor Steven Jay Gould in his acclaimed book The Mismeasure of Man, these tests were also influential in legitimizing forced sterilization of allegedly defective individuals in some states.20

By the 1920s mass use of the Stanford-Binet Scale and other tests had created a multimillion-dollar testing industry.21 By 1974, according to the Mental Measurements Yearbook, 2,467 tests measuring some form of intellectual ability were in print, 76 of which were identified as strict intelligence tests.22 In one year in the 1980s, teachers gave over 500 million standardized tests to children and adults across the United States.23In 1989 the American Academy for the Advancement of Science listed the IQ test among the twenty most significant scientific discoveries of the century along with nuclear fission, DNA, the transistor and flight.24 Patricia Broadfoot's dictum that assessment, far more than religion, has become the opiate of the people,25 has come of age.

So What are We Actually Measuring?

If an IQ test is supposed to measure a person's intelligence, the question is: What is intelligence? Is it the ability to do well in school? Is it the ability to read well and spell correctly? Or are the following people intelligent?

The physician who smokes three packets of cigarettes a day?

The Nobel prize winner whose marriage and personal life are in ruins?

The corporate executive who has ingeniously worked his way to the top and also earned a heart attack for his efforts?

The brilliant and successful music composer who handled his money so poorly that he was always running from his creditors (incidentally, his name was Mozart)?26

The problem is that the term intelligence has never been defined adequately and therefore nobody knows what an IQ test is supposed to measure. In spite of this the futures of thousands of children are determined by the results of this test.

Already in the early 1920s the journalist Walter Lippmann maintained that IQ tests were nothing but a series of stunts. We cannot measure intelligence when we have not defined it, he said.27

In 1962 Banesh Hoffman told a shocked America about the tyranny of testing in his classic book of the same name. His book and others that followed stirred up much controversy, leading the National Education Association in 1976 to recommend the elimination of group standardized intelligence, aptitude, and achievement tests.28 Sarason quotes an advertisement that was placed by PsychologyToday in the New York Times in August 1979, part of which appears below:

In the chaos of controversy, the standard IQ exam is flunking the test. Many educational psychologists feel that IQ testers have failed to answer two all-important questions: What is intelligence? What have IQ tests actually measured?

The National Education Association, with membership of almost 2 million teachers, has called for the abolition of standardized intelligence tests because they are at best wasteful, and at worst, destructive.

Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg says in P.T. that psychologists know almost nothing about what it is that they have been measuring. The tests have proved overall to have only low to moderate power to predict such things as future job performance, income and status, or overall happiness and adjustment.29

However, the dust soon settled after this uprising and the testing industry became more powerful than ever. The National Education Association has completely changed its stand and now recognizes the need for periodic comprehensive testing for evaluation and diagnosis of student progress.30 This is no wonder, says Armstrong, since it would have taken a major miracle to eliminate testing.31

Today, voices for the elimination of standardized tests are few. One is Linda S. Siegel, professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She proposes that we abandon the IQ test in the analysis of the LD child. According to most definitions  although they are not conclusive  intelligence is made up of the skills of logical reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking, and adaptation.32 This scenario seems reasonable, until one examines the content of IQ tests. The definition of intelligence, as is operationalized in all IQ tests, includes virtually no skills that can be identified in terms of the definitions of intelligence. To support her statement, Siegel gives a detailed analysis of the subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). This IQ test is composed of Verbal and Performance sections, and is nearly always used in LD diagnosis. In each subtest of the Verbal scale, performance is in varying degrees dependent on specific knowledge, vocabulary, expressive language and memory skills, while in the Performance scale, visual-spatial abilities, fine motor coordination, perceptual skills, and in some subtests speed, are essential for scoring.33 As Siegel rightly points out, IQ tests measure, for the most part, what a person haslearned, not what he or she is capable of doing in the future (his potential).34

There is an additional problem in the use of IQ tests with individuals with learning disabilities. According to Siegel it is a paradox that IQscores are required of people with LD because most of these persons have deficiencies in one or more of the component skills that are part of these IQ tests  memory, language, fine motor skills, et cetera. The effect is that they may end up having a lower IQ score than a person who does not have such problems, even though they may both have identical reasoning and problem-solving skills. The lower IQ score, therefore, may be a result of the learning disability, and IQ scores may underestimate the real intelligence of the individual with a learning disability.35

Another assumption of the discrepancy definition is that the IQ score should predict reading, so that if you have a low IQ score you should be a poor reader and that poor reading is an expected consequence of low IQ. However, there are individuals who have low IQ scores and are good readers.36

The unreliability of IQ tests has been proved by numerous researchers. The scores may vary by as much as 15 points from one test to another,37 while emotional tension, anxiety, and unfamiliarity with the testing process can greatly affect test performance.38 In addition, Gould described the biasing effect that tester attitudes, qualifications, and instructions can have on testing.39 The same applies to other diagnostic tests.

The Final Say

In the face of this, it makes one shudder to think that far-reaching decisions are sometimes made about children, and that such decisions are often based solely on test scores:

The best example is found in the individualized educational program (IEP) meeting. Who has the most influence at these meetings? Is it the parent who has raised a child with suspected learning problems from birth and therefore has a wealth of development experience that bears on issues at hand? Is it the child's current teacher who has spent weeks or months in daily contact with the child? Is it the school principal who is responsible for the welfare of all teachers and children in the school and who may have already been involved in seeking solutions for the child's schooling?

Unfortunately, it is none of these. The professional with more relative influence on IEP decisions is the person who probably has spent the least time with the child, both directly and indirectly. It is the professional who has spent this limited time evaluating the child with relatively unreliable measures, in a context usually far removed from the ecological validity of the classroom setting, in an attempt to determine a diagnosis that is often irrelevant to classroom functioning. It is, of course, the school psychologist.40

How far-reaching and how wrong the decisions of the school psychologist, based on his unreliable measures, can sometimes be, is clearly illustrated by the following story:

When Gregory Ochoa was a high school student in California, he and his classmates were given an IQ test. Gregory and the other students were told that the results would enable the school to place them in classes commensurate with their skills. It seemed like a fair thing to do; after all, they were all being given the same chance, the same test.

But, after looking at the questions, Gregory discovered that he just didn't understand many of the words, and he couldn't understand exactly what he was supposed to do. Spanish was the language spoken in his home, and his English skills were not quite equal to those of most of his classmates. Gregory, and a few others who were having the same trouble, pointed out their difficulty to the person who administered the test. They were told, Do the best you can.

A few weeks after taking the test, Gregory found himself in a special class. Most of the other students in the class also had Spanish surnames such as Martinez or Gonzales. Gregory didn't fully realize what had happened. He never understood the term educable mentally retarded which was written on the teacher's letterhead and on the bulletin board in the classroom. All Gregory knew was that the special class didn't do regular school work. Gregory's teacher was sort of a coach, and they played a lot of soccer. Any class member interested in intellectual pursuits, such as going to the school library, found that such activities were out of bounds.

Gregory soon dropped out of school. He drifted about and got into trouble. He was sent to a reform school where he received some remedial teaching. After school he joined the navy. He scored well on the navy tests. They never told him what his IQ was on retesting, but they seemed pleased that a retarded person could do so well. While in the navy, Gregory earned high school credits, which eventually enabled him to attend college as a student on probation. His first quarter in college he received all A's. His second quarter he again received all A's, but he was kept on probation. Gregory finally graduated from San Jose City College on the dean's list as an honor student  on probation! The college was apparently unable to think of him as no longer mentally retarded. By the age of forty, Gregory Ochoa was an assistant professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he taught classes in social casework.41

The story underlines the veracity of Langeveld's statement that nobody may ever be denied the opportunity to disprove test scores.42

It has been demonstrated clearly by numerous studies how unreliable test scores can be, and therefore any decisions that school psychologists might make on the basis of such scores. In one study, ninety-nine school psychologists independently scored an IQ test from identical records, and came up with IQ's ranging from 63 to 117 for the same person.43

In another study, Ysseldyke et al. examined the extent to which professionals were able to differentiate learning-disabled students from ordinary low achievers by examining patterns of scores on psychometric measures. Subjects were 65 school psychologists, 38 special-education teachers, and a naive group of 21 university students enrolled in programs unrelated to education or psychology. Provided with forms containing information on 41 test or subtest scores (including the WISC-R IQ test) of nine school-identified LD students and nine non-LD students, judges were instructed to indicate which students they believed were learning disabled and which were non-learning disabled.44

The school psychologists and special-education teachers were able to differentiate between LD students and low achievers with only 50 percent accuracy. The naive judges, who had never had more than an introductory course in education or psychology, evidenced a 75 percent hit rate.45 When Ysseldyke and Algozzine cite Scriven, they clearly show their belief that the current system is in trouble:

The pessimist says that a 12 ounce glass containing 6 ounces of drink is half empty  the optimist calls it half full. I can't say what I think the pessimist could say about research and practice in special education at this point, but I think the optimist could say that we have a wonderful opportunity to start all over!46